Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History

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Mesopotamia is the birthplace of history.

At the height of its power, this lush region was encircled by two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Over the course of thousands of years, Mesopotamia saw the world's first cities, the first writing system, the early seeds of agriculture, the development of myths, medicine, literature and astronomy that all went on to influence societies around the world.

In this fresh history, Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid brings us closer than ever before to the lives of ancient people from the land between two rivers. Through the clay tablets they left behind, Al-Rashid explores the foundations of extraordinary societies and empires, from the Sumerians to the Babylonians. We find, immortalised in clay and stone, early dictionaries, a dog's paw prints, a parent desperately trying to soothe a baby, a bored teenager doodling during class, a slave negotiating their freedom, the world's first museum and countless receipts for beer.

With startling modernity,Between Two Riverstells the story of how history was made.

Author Bio

Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid is a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Wolfson College, where she specialises in the languages and history of ancient Mesopotamia. She completed her B.A. from Columbia University in Philosophy, and after a single day of learning about cuneiform texts at a summer school, decided to pursue the subject with a Master's degree and eventually a Doctoral degree at the University of Oxford.

She has written for academic and popular journals, including History Today, on topics as diverse as mental illness in ancient Mesopotamia to Late Assyrian scholarly networks. In addition to her writing, she has also appeared on several podcasts, including the BBC Podcasts Making History and You're Dead to Me. Through her Twitter account, which has over 27,000 followers, she hopes to give ancient Mesopotamia as wide an audience as possible and to humanise its long history. Originally from Saudi Arabia where she grew up, she now lives near Oxford with her family and their four dogs.